“I have never been so bad as that,” she said, “I have always had company; I have never lost an ’usband, like you, my lady; but I feel for your ladyship all the same.” “And I shrink from going back,” said Lady Randolph, “and going all alone. I think if Lucy could come with me, it would be a great thing for me; and we should have time to make acquaintance with each other; and Mrs. Ford, I am sure, would look after all the things, and bring them and the little brother to meet us at the station to-morrow. Will you begin our life together by being kind to me, Lucy?” she said, with a smile. There were difficulties, great difficulties, to be apprehended from Jock; but Lucy could not refuse such an appeal; and this was how it happened, that, to the great surprise of Farafield, she was seen in her little crape bonnet and veil (much too old for her, Lady Randolph at once decided) driving in the gray of the wintery afternoon, through the chilly streets--the day her father was buried! there were some people who thought it very unfeeling. When it was mentioned at dinner in the big house in the market-place inhabited by the town clerk, Mrs. Rushton was very much scandalized. “The very day of the funeral!” she cried; “they might have let her keep quiet one day; for I don’t blame the girl--how was she to know any better? I always said it was a fatal thing for Lucy when that old fool of a father chose a fashionable fine old lady for her guardian. Oh, don’t speak to me, I have no patience with him. I think, from beginning to end, them never was such a ridiculous will. If it had been me, I should have taken it into court; I should have had it broke--” “You might have found it difficult to do that. How would you have had it broke, I should like to know?” her husband said. “Ladies’ law,” said Mr. Chevril, who was very busy with his dinner, and did not care to waste words. “It is not my trade,” said Mrs. Rushton, “that’s your business. I can tell you I should have done it had it been in my hands. But it’s not in my hands; a woman never has a chance. You may talk of ladies’ law, but this I know, that if we had the law to make it would not be so silly. A woman would have known what was for the girl’s true advantage; we would have said to old Mr. Trevor, Don’t be such an old fool. We should have told him boldly, such and such a thing is not for your girl’s advantage. Had any of you men the courage to do that? And the result is, Lucy is in the hands of a fashionable lady who can’t live without excitement, and takes her out to drive on the day of her father’s funeral. I never heard anything like it, for my part.”